Saplings spread comfort: Under the care of Stamford-based business

Olivia Just

Published 11:37 pm, Friday, September 13, 2013

Like many Americans, Scott Richardson can describe where he was on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 in vivid, precise detail. An arborist at Bartlett Tree Experts serving the town of Greenwich, Richardson was with a client in town that day, when he heard the news that the first tower of the World Trade Center had fallen.

"I was with my crew, pruning an esplanade of trees leading up the house, when my client called me from the door and said, `Come and see this,'" Richardson said. "I was looking at it and was obviously in complete disbelief."

In the 12 years after terrorist attacks brought down the World Trade Center, in which 161 people with ties to Connecticut died, the Stamford-based Bartlett Tree Experts has become responsible for the care of the trees at the 9/11 memorial site in Manhattan, and of one tree in particular, a resilient Bradford Pear known as the "Survivor Tree." Discovered in the rubble of the buildings in 2001, the tree was cared for, thrived and has since perpetuated over 400 new saplings from its seeds, all overseen by Bartlett.

The saplings are cared for and stored at the John Bowne Agricultural High School in Flushing, Queens, N.Y., where Bartlett has had a long partnership teaching students about agriculture and landscaping.

This year, three of those saplings will be donated to three specific communities that have survived tragedies: Boston, Mass., in commemoration of the April Boston Marathon bombing, Far Rockaway, N.Y., which sustained damage in Hurricane Sandy last year, and Prescott, Ariz., in honor of the 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, a firefighting squad, who died on June 30 while fighting a 2,000-acre fire.

"We've done a phenomenal amount of work to preserve this tree," David McMaster, vice president of Bartlett Tree Experts, said. "We're doing it because we feel there's great significance in memorializing 9/11, and we feel we're able to add to that experience to have a living monument which, if handled properly, can go on in perpetuity. It means a tremendous amount for the company."

To ensure the Survivor Tree remains a physical presence for many decades, Bartlett is working on the "grafting" of the tree, a process which takes tissues from one tree and implants them in another.

Through this procedure, genetic material is taken from the original Bradford Pear and grafted into the seedlings, in order to create a new crop of trees that are genetically identical to the Survivor Tree, McMaster said.

The original tree once grew in soil owned by Port Authority, while the World Trade Center still stood, now belongs to the 9/11 memorial. Ron Vega, the memorial's lead architect, was the person who first thought of the idea to bring the tree back to the site, to commemorate the event, McMaster said.

The symbolic impact of using a living plant to commemorate memorial is a powerful one, with a deep historical precedent. Plants have been used since ancient times to express grief, offer condolence or show caring, said Bob Heffernan, executive director of the Connecticut Nursery and Landscape Association in Monroe.

"It's very much a part of human nature to grapple with grief using trees and flowers," Heffernan said. "They're living monuments to those who were lost and it's perfectly honorable that a tree such as the Bradford Pear is that was at the site is becoming a memorial. Bartlett is widely considered a leader in being progressive in the communities they serve. This is in keeping with their character and their mission."

For Richardson, after nearly 30 years with Bartlett and 19 working closely in the Greenwich community, the commemoration of the Survivor Tree feels just right. One of his clients was on board United Airlines Flight 93 on that day, the plane which crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.

"That's a huge honor for Bartlett to be associated with that," Richardson said. "Those are very important, symbolic trees. That tree (the Survivor Tree) is sort of like New York, the surrounding areas and the whole country. It does make one proud."